Well, my real name is Law Society of Upper Canada. Some people call me, “The Law Society”, but we can drop the formalities, right? Just call me LSUC. Listen, I know we’re not as close as we could be, and I know I typically only call when I want something (like fees, CPD reporting, an annual report, maybe a practice audit, etc…) but I really need your help.

You see, we’re holding this election. It only happens every four years, but it’s kind of a big deal. There are, like, 96 lawyers across Ontario that want to support LSUC’s mandate to advance the cause of justice and protect the public interest by serving as Benchers. Benchers are like the Board of Directors, so they oversee our $100M operations, but they are also Governors, adjudicators and committee members that establish polices like your code of conduct, professional competency standards, and stuff like that.

Uh oh…have I lost your interest already?

The thing is, I’m really worried. There’s like, nearly 50,000 of you out there and I’ve been trying to get you to vote since last Monday, but as of yesterday, only 8500 of you did. Look, I don’t want to play to stereotypes about lawyers not being good at math, but that’s like, um…., only 17% of you.

I’ve been trying to get your attention about this election, and I think a few of the candidates have too. Heck, I know they have. After all, why else would so many of you be complaining about endless emails, letters, tweets and other campaign nuisance?

In 2011, about 37% of lawyers voted in the Bencher election. With those Benchers in place, LSUC established the Law Practice Program, studied Alternative Business Structures, reviewed the accreditation request of Trinity Western University, studied the challenges faced by racialized licensees and women in the profession, spent a ton of cash on some high profile disciplinary matters. We did a bunch more, but you get the picture.

Now it could be that the 83% of you that haven’t voted are completely cool with all that we did and/or that you have full faith or are indifferent about how the class of 2015 Benchers will run things until the next election in 2019. But I hope you might want to be closer to what’s going on. I know I’d like it if we talked more and not only when I need something.

But I really do need something this time.

I need you to vote.

It’s really easy. Check your in-box or spam filter from April 13th. I sent you a note with a personalized link. A few clicks, 3-5 minutes and BOOM! You’re done!

Luckily, a couple other places have put together some lists with more details from the candidates. These aren’t official and not all candidates, are listed, so it’s not like I’m endorsing them, but they still might help.

Those keeners at the OBA even put together a big canvass with 63 candidate pictures. It’s cool, you know, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

Anyway, I’ve been rambling. Funny though, in the time it took you to read this, you could have voted! lol

So, I hate to ask, but I’d really like your help with 2 things.

First, please vote.

And second, please bug your lawyer friends (you know, especially the ones that don’t like me very much and are always offering an opinion on what I should do) to do the same.

It’s kind of embarrassing that I’ve only been able to get a third of you to vote in the past. Municipalities get more than that. Hell (oops, sorry, Heck!), student councils probably do better.

This was nice.

Thanks for listening.

Your BFF, LSUC.

*Disclaimer: This may shock you, but I’m really not LSUC and I’m not authorized to speak for LSUC. I’m using satire, perhaps poorly so, but it’s intended as satire nonetheless. I’m just Colin Lachance, an LSUC licensee and Bencher candidate speaking on my own behalf.

]]>https://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/are-you-there-lawyers-its-me-lsuc/feed/1lachanceonlawwaldoIs the Goal of the Future to Catch Up With the Past?https://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/is-the-goal-of-the-future-to-catch-up-with-the-past/
https://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/is-the-goal-of-the-future-to-catch-up-with-the-past/#respondMon, 13 Apr 2015 03:56:11 +0000http://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/?p=297]]>Yes. Sort of. But only if by “the past”, we mean some idealized period when things were easier, cheaper, simpler and better. Apply those same adjectives to the future, and you will forever be chasing the horizon or the end of the rainbow.

In discussions of access to justice issues or legal service markets, the present is the problem and the future looks even worse. For lawyers and the public we serve, everything is already too complex, too time or labour intensive, too expensive, too unjust, or just too hard. Accordingly, process improvement proposals or tech-driven solutions are not offered merely as a way to change course, but to reverse course.

In the context of legal services, the idealized past we hope to reach in the future is one where the solutions address the needs and challenges of the people we are trying to serve. It’s not much more complicated than that. Where it gets complicated is that we all have wildly different ideas about which problems to tackle in which order and through applying which solutions.

In a recent post, Ravel Law CEO Daniel Lewis recounts a story about a 1948 U.S. senatorial election campaign during which the legal advisors to a pre-presidential Lyndon B. Johnson set about finding a judge most likely to rule against Johnson’s interest. Read the full post for more details, including why losing was the objective. In Lewis’ telling, this was an early example of what his company currently enables – legal data analysis. For me, the story served as a reminder that the needs and wants of earlier periods are less subject to change than the suitability of the solutions we devise.

When it comes to putting your best foot forward in court, the timeless need of lawyers and clients from any era is to present the facts and law in ways that resonate with the judge. In Johnson’s day, that was aided by the efforts of several lawyers poring through case reports. Today, Ravel Law uses a combination of big (legal) data and lawyer-informed algorithms to help predict what Judge “A” may or may not do in response to particular arguments. Tomorrow, they or someone else may design a better methodology.

We won’t know what will work until it works

I’m a big fan and promoter of experimentation and innovation – particularly when it comes to legal tech and to rethinking legal service delivery models. I’m of the school that believes that when the challenges we face came about while we’ve been doing things one way, then it is worth exploring different ways of doing things even if we can’t yet be certain which path will lead to better days.

On the tech side, we don’t need to embrace everything that comes along, but we do need to encourage the innovation. Rare is the technology capable of creating a need and corresponding market (tablets, fitbits, 3D home printers, and smart watches do come to mind here), rarer still the scenario where the originally conceived tech advances can hold their place in the market and the hearts and minds of consumers, undisturbed, for decades at a time (although microwaves and dishwashers are having a very impressive run). More common is the scenario where our desire remains relatively constant (e.g., watching movies at home) even as an ever changing array of solutions come and go (16mm film, VCRs, pay-per-view, DVDs, blue-ray, bittorrent, digital downloads, Netflix….???).

Luddites though lawyers may be, we aren’t incapable of evolution. After all, most of us are now pretty comfortable with electronic legal research. But we do need to up our tech game as our worlds begin to change faster than Apple upgrades iPhone versions!

I can’t tell you which current or future development will bring us close to the idealized past, but I do feel confident in suggesting that lawyers interested in making things easier, cheaper, simpler and better need to get engaged. I’ll go further and suggest that true engagement means looking beyond your own experience and industry for ideas and collaborators. I’ll go further still and suggest that the biggest barrier to reaching the idealized past is refusing to move forward and being part of that shrinking cohort that believes that the best approach lies in doing things the way you always have.

If we truly want to recapture yesterday, we need to start building tomorrow today.

Back when I knew everything the world was much simpler. Any topic, situation, challenge or choice could be easily placed into one of two categories. Category 1 consisted of matters where I was right and category 2 consisted of matters that didn’t matter.

Back when I knew everything there were no hard choices. Other people’s resources were best directed to ends of my choosing and my own resources were merely allocated between “now” and “soon”, possibly to “later”, but never to “never”.

Back when I knew everything there was no gap between my interest and the public interest.

It may be that my memory of the time, or even of the existence of a time, when I knew everything is a false memory. In any event, reaching the pinnacle of enlightenment is no longer a personal goal as it only seems to recede in the distance. (Perhaps I should ask my four teenagers to remind me what it’s like to still be so close?)

Of course, not knowing everything does not mean you know nothing, it just means you have an unbounded opportunity to learn and grow. It also turns out that knowing everything and getting your way doesn’t compare favourably to the progress and outcomes achievable through conversation, shared effort, shared priorities and occasionally placing the interests of others ahead of our own.

Changing legal markets and meeting the public interest

Ok, now, and without taking offense to the comparison, ask yourself how you and your organization are approaching the changes underway and still to come. Do you know everything and see your approach, needs and views as synonymous with the public interest? How do you define what matters? When advocating in favour of a particular direction for reform or a particular allocation of public resources, what factors influence your position?

At their core and in the details, regulatory reform of the market for legal services and the growing crisis in public access to justice are two very different topics. However, many of the players are the same and the interconnectedness and interdependence of all facets of the administration of justice means that actions taken in one area must be taken in contemplation of their impact in the other.

Fortunately, we are not seeing the archetypal “know everything” player lay down the one true path as all stakeholders are reasonably aware that a multiplicity of interests are at play. Surprisingly, however, we do see a fair bit of sniping directed at (and occasionally from) various organizations such as politicians, governments, courts, judges, law societies, the Canadian Bar Association and others for pursuing conversation and study, and for taking what appears to many to be incremental actions instead of leaping forward with bold solutions. This confuses me. Responsibility for the current state of affairs doesn’t lie at the feet of one player so why should one – any one – bear the accountability to “fix” it (whatever that means). Nonetheless, for many, the wisdom of the King prevails:

A little less conversation, a little more action if you please
All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me…

In praise of incremental improvement, outsiders and experimentation

In an interdependent system, the priorities and actions of any given player will necessarily impact the fortunes of others in ways foreseeable and unforeseeable. It’s natural that engagement in public debates – as participant or even as moderator – will involve a little bit of defending ones turf. After all, we clearly felt there were principled reasons for our past actions so why wouldn’t we defend the right to carry on as before under a new or altered regime?

Moving swiftly to solutions becomes easier to do as the category of matters that don’t matter grows. Ask me to engage in a reform project with narrow terms of reference and my frame of reference is more likely to be on the impacts on my interests than on the opportunities for improvement. Consequently, don’t be surprised if my contribution to the discussion incorporates recommendations that align my interest with the public interest. I no longer believe that I know everything, but if you make reform discussions one where the idealized future state does not contemplate an incremental move away from the present and I will surely behave as if I do.

Because of the propensity for these kinds of behaviours, some have argued that lawyers are irreparably conflicted in these debates as their livelihoods are at stake. Similar existential arguments have been levelled at other stakeholders when defense of their purpose and contribution is accompanied by defense of their need for funding at a sufficient level (indexed to inflation, etc….) to carry out their mission. Certainly, to rely solely on insiders to reform themselves and their system in their own good time would be foolish, but it would be equally foolish to discount their contributions as irredeemably self-interested.

The nature of legal practice, dispute resolution and the administration of justice are no longer closed systems and no amount of effort from traditional players to maintain the status quo or traditional models will have any lasting effect. Whether in the context of regulatory oversight or access to the courts, there is no historical or future ideal to which we can strive. There is only flux. Things were always changing and the rate of change is only increasing.

In this environment, a little humility as we all muddle through to improve our collective lot could go a long way.

]]>https://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/back-when-i-knew-everything/feed/0lachanceonlawIs law school debt an access to justice issue? Yes.https://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/is-law-school-debt-an-access-to-justice-issue-yes/
https://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/is-law-school-debt-an-access-to-justice-issue-yes/#respondWed, 01 Apr 2015 00:01:45 +0000http://lachanceonlaw.wordpress.com/?p=293]]>Tonight at the University of Ottawa facuty of law a discussion of this topic is underway. Students, lawyers, LSUC bencher candidates and others are examining the question and discussing what should be done. Follow #LSbencher on Twitter to keep up. I was invited but coudn’t make it. What follows would have been my opening statement:

High student debt load plainly has a negative impact on access to justice. The Law Society is obliged to facilitate access to justice and has a duty to act in the public interest. Accordingly, it bears a responsibility to lead engagement with the law schools, the province and the profession to address the challenges arising from a system that can both price qualified students out of a legal education and skew graduating students away from public interest work.

The issues are not linear nor are they limited to student debt burden. Yes, when high tuitions lead to high debt loads, it is extremely difficult to justify pursuing a lower-paying public interest career. But funding crunches at the courts, and among A2J organizations and public sector employers further reduce the opportunities for new law graduates and lawyers of all ages to carry out work at publicly or charitably funded employers. Articling and permanent legal jobs in support of community needs, human rights advocacy, or other forms of support to poor, marginalized or vulnerable individuals are increasingly scarce. And as a recent article in Precedent Magazine observed, the vitality of the criminal defence bar is at risk because with stagnating legal aid funding limiting the opportunities for a new generation of lawyers to develop theirs skills, many are simply turning to other legal activities or leaving the practice of law altogether.

Where do we begin? Skilled people and sufficient money are clearly critical to facilitating access to justice to all Ontario citizens who can’t afford adequate representation and legal support, and the system is presently bleeding, not adding these resources. Improving this situation is a burden that should be borne by all players in the system, but it is evident that ever-increasing tuition levels means the system is presently asking too much too soon of those students seeking to bring their passions to making a difference.